


Home Remedies

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 21:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17169308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Jack has a cold, and David tries to cure him.





	Home Remedies

The morning began with cold winds, drizzling rain, and the sound of Jack coughing as he waited for the distribution office to open up. He’d been sick for more than a week, and David had almost given up on trying to get him to do anything about it. David had given Jack a handkerchief to cough into the first day, but then Dutchy had slipped and torn open his hand a few hours later, and Jack had thought, as Jack was wont to do, that using a germ infested bit of cloth that he’d been wiping his nose with to bind up the cut would be a good idea.

On day two David had told Jack to stop swallowing the stuff that he coughed up, since keeping it in his body would just make his cough worse.

“That’s funny,” Jack had said.

“Why?”

“You know those fellas who come down to the lodge to lecture us on Thursdays sometimes?”

“You mean the nuns?” David had asked.

“Yeah. Them.”

“Jack…” David had started, but his friend had held up a hand to silence him before David could fully launch into an explanation of why ‘fellas’ wasn’t exactly the proper term to use when referring to nuns.

 

“I don’t usually go if I can help it,” continued Jack. “Got other stuff to do, but I listened in for a while last week, and it was all a talk about how we shouldn’t spit on the street.”

David had made a face at that. “Well, you’re not supposed to do that either,” he’d said. “It’s a good way to spread disease.”

David had felt bad about both pieces of advice right after he’d given them. They were conflicting. He’d known that they were conflicting. The thing was, his mom had also always been in the habit telling him both things, and he had long been used to the extra layer of misery that being congested and agonizing over what would be the least disgusting way of dealing with it added to a chest cold. He hadn’t truly expected Jack to listen to him, though. Certainly he hadn’t expected Jack’s occasional looks of deep discomfort after coughing, and his tendency to try and find ways to disappear after.

There would be no disappearing today, however. Not unless Jack wanted to disappear entirely. Not that David was counting or anything, but he was fairly certain that Jack coughed twenty-six and a half times just while waiting to buy his papes (the half time was added for good measure, since David couldn’t always be sure if Jack was coughing or just clearing his throat, and so calculated possible throat clearings, definite throat clearings, shallow coughs, and deep coughs differently.).

“You sound terrible,” David commented needlessly. Jack, who had been the very picture of vacant-eyed, clammy-faced illness a second ago, broke into an easy grin.

“I’m just warming up. We’d better get some extra papes, while I sound the way I do.”

“I’ve been working on my cough,” announced Les, who was standing just behind Jack. Without waiting for an answer from his idol, Les put on his most pitiful face emitted the sound that he had indeed been working very hard on the entire night. It had struck David the evening before as being reminiscent of the noise that a plague infected walrus might make upon being stabbed to death with a rusty corkscrew, which was really saying something, because usually David was a lot less colorful in his analogies and tended to compare things to situations that he knew, or which at the very least had some basis in rational reality..

The biggest problem was that Les’s fake cough didn’t sound that terribly different than Jack’s real cough. Jack sounded worse, was all. Even so, he grinned at Les and slapped him on the back as if everything was fine.

“If I had half this kid’s talent, I wouldn’t have to milk this cough for all it’s worth while I got it.” He ruffled Les’s hair, while David looked on in concern.

“Why don’t we skip selling today,” David suggested, looking hard at Jack. His eyes were reddish, like he hadn’t slept well, and David could understand why. The lodging house was loud and cold. He was already formulating plans of what to say to get Jack to stay the night at his place, but Jack just rolled his eyes The distribution window had finally opened, and he was leaning across it to buy his papes.

David must have suggested going to his house about two dozen times before he finally got Jack to agree. Annoyingly, Jack was doing a great job of selling. He was moving around the city quickly, and so were his papers. He even seemed to be in a good mood. That was why David was surprised when Jack finally, with a strange edge in his voice, said that he would go with him.

“It’s alright to have a rest,” Les assured Jack. “You sold fifty papes to Dave’s thirty.”

“Thirty-eight!” David protested.

“Fifty trillion.” Jack countered.

“That’s not even…”

“I’m talking about my whole lifetime here, Dave. I figure fifty trillion might even be a conservative estimate.”

“Trillion is an awfully big number,” David responded dubiously.

“Right. So, what I’m saying is the only reason I’m going back to your place is to give you a chance to catch up.”

“To fifty trillion? Do you even know what fifty trillion looks like? I can write it out for you if like. You can’t have possibly have…”

But Jack coughed again, and the annoyance on David’s face was replaced with worry.

“Okay,” David said, “Never mind. We’re wasting time out here talking, when we should be getting you warmed up.”

—————————————————————  
“Are you better yet?” Les asked after Jack had been inside for three minutes. David had told Jack so many times that he would feel better if he just came with them that he wondered if he had somehow convinced Les that their house had magical healing properties in the process.

“Doing great,” Jack said, leaning back on the couch and looking bored. David had ordered him to sit down while he started up the woodstove. It was strange to see Jack sitting still, or at least something the bore a slight resemblance to still.

It took David a few minutes to get the stove working. Usually his mother did this kind of thing, but she was at work, and so was his pa, who had found a new job recently. In two weeks, after his dad’s first paycheck came in, David would be back at school, and then there would be nobody to look after Jack if he got like this again. David sat down on the couch next to Jack with an annoyed huff, even though he’d succeeded at his task and the stove was burning the way it should. Jack leaned back like he was trying to get comfortable.

“Now what?” Jack asked.

David blinked.

“Well?” Jack continued, “Ain’t I supposed to be doing something so this cough’ll go away?”

“It’s called resting, Jack.” David said. “And keeping warm. For a couple of days at least.”

“I got it. Why not make it a week for good measure? Or a month? Wouldn’t it be good if I just went to sleep for a month? It’d even be ‘sensible’, like you’re always saying.”

David wondered why Jack was being so terse with him, but then Jack started coughing again and David wondered less about that and more about what he could actually do for him. Jack was right about not having a lot of time to rest, and even though David understood where the idea had come from, it bothered him just the same.

“Alright,” Jack said, pushing himself up after another ten minutes had passed, “I figure I’ve been here just about forever, and I feel about the same, so I’m going back out. I’m gonna be sick either way, so I might as well get paid for it.”

“Don’t!” David leapt up beside him. “We’ve got some cough medicine you could take but…”

“But?”

“It makes you see things,” Les supplied helpfully. David frowned.

“It’s the only time mama ever bought something off a street hawker. It… well, I guess it makes the coughing stop. Or maybe it just makes you forget about it…hard to say. Sarah and I tried to create a new civilization the only time we took the stuff. Maybe we shouldn’t…. wait! I have a better idea.”

David gestured for Jack to stay sitting before going into the kitchen to heat up a kettle of water, and waiting impatiently for it to start boiling. When that was finished he grabbed a towel from the bathroom, poured the water into a bowl, put them both on the kitchen table, and called out for Jack to come in. Much to David’s relief Jack hadn’t snuck out of the house yet, and he came over with Les in tow.

“Sit down here,” David ordered. “Put the towel on your head and lean over the bowl.”

Jack took one look at him, his bowl, and his towel, and burst out laughing. David threw up his hands in annoyance, and would have scolded if Jack’s laughter hadn’t turned to coughing quite so quickly.

“I won’t say it serves you right but…”

“That’s…” Jack rasped between coughs, “Exactly… What… you’re saying.”

David pulled up a chair next to Jack’s. He rubbed Jack’s back until the coughing started to calm down, then pushed him forward slightly, draping the towel down over the top of his head, so it made a sort of tent around the hot liquid.

“Now what am I supposed to do?” Jack asked. There was something funny about hearing his voice emanating out of the folds of David’s light blue bath towel, but to David’s credit, he didn’t laugh.

“Breathe in the steam,” David said.

“You sure you ain’t doing this as part of a trick? Denton going to hop out of your closet with his camera in a second there, Dave?”

“My closet’s not big enough for Denton. Not unless he moves all the stuff out and curls up into a ball. Besides, I was planning of sneaking off to steal your papes while you can’t see me, and going out to sell them. I’ve got your trillion to catch up to, after all.”

David rested his hand on the nape of Jack’s neck as he spoke, fingers moving gently there. It was the sort of thing he’d do for Les in an instant if he were sick, and that he only remembered a few seconds too late that he wouldn’t normally do for Jack. At least Jack didn’t seem to mind, and it didn’t feel as odd to David is it would have if Jack’s face had been uncovered, and he hadn’t been bent over as he was.

David waited until he was pretty certain that the water had become cold before moving or stopping what he was doing. Even before Jack removed the towel from his head, David knew that he would be smiling.

“How do you feel?” David asked.

“A bit better actually. Yeah. I think I’m feeling a little better.”

“Good.”

“It’s a shame I don’t gotta take the cough medicine, though. I’d like to see what kind of civilization the two of us could come up with.”

David felt his ears go red at that, though he wasn’t sure why, except for the vague worry that what he and Jack would come up with might be something he currently didn’t know quite how to describe.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Getting Jack to stay the night didn’t work. There were some things he was insistent on, and paying his ten cents to sleep at the Newsboy Lodging House each night was one of those things. David tried not to regret it, as Les explained to their mother why there was a bath towel in the middle of the kitchen. His mom smiled knowingly.

“So Jack has a runny nose?” She asked. “Poor dear. How did your remedy work?”

“It was great,” David said slowly. “But it was a cough. His nose is fine.”

His mom just shook her head, “This is supposed to be a remedy for a stuffy nose, but if it turned out great, I won’t question it too much.” She gave David’s hair a light tug before going over to the kitchen counter, where she was cutting up carrots for dinner.

David however, did question why his remedy had worked so well if it was the wrong remedy, and the only explanation he could come up with was that Jack, for whatever reason, had believed in it.


End file.
